Rat Pack
by sharpiewashere
Summary: A collection of shorts of Callie's life before she was SAMCRO's new First Lady.


Before Huntington Beach, Callie lived in various places, including San Fransisco, where she went to elementary school, and where she met Phineas Astor. In Kindergarten, Callie was a well-behaved, straight A student. By the first grade, only her grades remained constant, her perfect student front forever kicked in the nuts. She had never regretted it.  
It was a time where most first graders were learning proper manners and the difference between wrong or right. Callie had always been about doing what was right, and even at an early age, she was willing to take a risk to make sure right overturned wrong. She knew her manners. Her mother had drilled "please" and "thank you" into her mind. She knew not to chew with her mouth open. Follow the rules. Use her indoor voice. Do not argue. Do not use potty language. Be respectful. Most of these she understood and followed, even if she had to be reminded. However, there was one rule she had trouble following, and that was refusing the use of violence. She knew to never hit or bite, but when prompted, she could not help it. It was her natural defense system that fully kicked in when she saw the new boy corned on the playground at recess.  
She had never experienced a "new kid" before. In Kindergarten, she became accustomed to the same 20 plus kids throughout the school year, having only one transfer to a different school before Christmas Break. It was almost a month into her first grade year that she saw her first new student. He was the only new kid she remembered vividly.

"Class, meet our new student, Phineas Astor. Phineas is new to the city, so I want you all to make him feel welcome and show him around school."

Phineas was odd looking—or so Callie thought. He was a small boy. Much smaller than the other kids. Scrawny. Could have been mistaken for sickly, his eyelids were so purple. He kept his head down, shoulders shaking. He was terrified. Callie noticed this immediately. Why was he shaking? Why was he so scared? She knew of no one who would hurt him. In her young mind, no one in the school had the capability to bully. They were better than that. They knew better. What she did not know was that there were plenty sitting in every classroom, and the first grade bullies had their first prey. Phineas Astor was open season.  
No one said anything to Phineas as he sat down. All of the classroom's desks were arranged into quads around the room, and Phineas was a group over from Callie's set of desks. She watched as he sat nervously beside a large boy, who sat across from another boy and a blonde girl. None of them said a word.  
It was lunch time before words were spoken. None to Phineas, of course. Callie heard them as she stood in line. Two girls in her class were in front of her, snickering.

"He looks like a Kindergartener."

"His clothes are too big."

"He doesn't talk. What's wrong with him?"

Callie did not defend the new boy, nor did anyone else as more and more of her classmates made fun of his freckles and dark red hair. Pale skin. Anything to pick at. Anything at all. Callie did not understand it. So, he had red hair and freckles? His clothes were too big because he just had not had the chance to grow into them. He had not done anything wrong.  
A few weeks later, the picking and the abuse was getting worse. She had seen the young boy crying at lunch. He buried his nose in a book during recess, alone in a shady corner. As soon as school was over, he disappeared like smoke. His behavior was odd to Callie, but she kept thinking that soon he would acquire a friend, and the bullying would stop. She was wrong. It was a sunny day at recess when her frustration with her classmates came to a head.

"Look," a friend of hers said just as she was going to take her turn on the monkey bars, "Isn't that Phineas?"

Callie looked up to see the lone boy in his corner, where no one messed with him. Today, he was surrounded by the three boys she hated the most. Jocks. Loud mouths. The boys who would one day be quarterbacks. Callie hated them. They picked on everyone who was not in their circle. Typical kid behavior. Callie felt it uncalled for.  
Phineas sat beneath the larger boys, shaking as badly as they day he arrived. One boy raised a hand and slapped the boy's book to the grass. It was the first time Callie's rage sparked. It was a rush of fury and adrenaline she had never felt before, what pushed her to jump to the gravel and march across the playground, and what would have her in and out of the principal's office for the rest of her school career.  
She cleared the grass, picking up a rock as she went, and while the teacher was not watching, she chucked it at one of the bully's heads.

"Hey!" she called.

The three bullies looked up in surprise.

"What do you want?" the one in the middle snapped, the boy to his left rubbing the back of his head.

"Leave him alone!" she growled.

She marched around them and stepped in front of them, blocking the smaller boy.

"Get outta here, Callie!" the middle shouted.

"Yeah!" the other two agreed.

"No, you get outta here!" she argued, "Leave Phineas alone!"

"What are you gonna do? Tell on us?" the one to the right taunted.

Callie narrowed her eyes. Tattling did no good.

"Go away, you stupid girl!" the one on the left said.

"You go away, ugly!" Callie bit back.

The middle boy shoved Callie, and that was all it took. She snapped, lifting her leg and clocking the middle boy square between the legs. The boy screamed, and the other two ran. One in terror and the other to tattle. The injured boy fell to the grass, crying and choking on air. Callie smiled and reached for the book the bullies had slapped out of Phineas' hands. She dusted it off and read the title. Upon seeing the cover, she bounced with excitement.

"You like the Junior Animal Detectives, too?" she asked.

For the first time in the few weeks she had known Phineas Astor, the small boy looked up, large green eyes meeting hers.

"They're my favorite," he said softly, he voice almost a whisper.

Callie smiled and handed the book back to him. He smiled for the first time since he set foot in that school.

"Thank you," he said shyly.

"You're welcome."

Across the field, Callie could hear her name furiously being screamed. She retreated, ready to accept her punishment.  
Unfortunately, Callie was suspended for the rest of the week, the bullies only serving detention. However, when she returned, she was approached by a new Phineas Astor, and she immediately accepted him into her group of friends, where they discussed their hopes for the next installment of the Junior Animal Detectives series, then played it out during recess every day for the rest of the year. For the rest of her elementary school life, Callie was often in trouble, and her friends changed each year, but she always had Phineas at her side. The boy's shyness subsided as Callie helped him build his confidence, but when he could not defend for himself, she was right there, ready to spit in someone's face. The two spent many a detention together, and many teachers learned you did not get one without the other. They hoped their friendship would last forever, as many children did, but before Spring Break of their fifth grade year, she learned she would be moving to Huntington Beach, and away from her best friend.  
She spent her middle school years growing up with another trouble-maker. The master of destruction and Callie's worst influence, Zero Owens. From then on, she was ruined. However, one day in their Freshman year of high school, a new kid arrived, escorted by the ever kind Zero around the high school. A boy who had lost a lot of his scrawniness at puberty, and dyed his hair black, cutting it into choppy pieces and fitting in with the majority of Huntington's young punk scene. She would not have recognized him, had it not been for the green eyes and freckles, and the fact that he looked tiny next to the lanky gentle giant. He would not have recognized Callie, either. Her long brown hair was long gone, much to her parents' dismay. She had sheared it short and choppy, bleached it out and dyed it dark purple. Black eyeliner and various eyeshadow shades adorned her blue eyes, and her clothes were becoming exceedingly darker and more androgynous. Had Zero not introduced them, they would have gone unnoticed.

"Oh my God! Callie?"

Callie looked up, and before Zero could ask how Phineas knew his girlfriend, they two charged and held each other in a death grip. Phineas was almost in tears.

"I've missed you, Cal," Phineas said into her shoulder.

They parted and she fixed the black fringe falling in his eyes.

"I've missed you, too. Why didn't you tell me you were moving down here?" she asked.

Phineas smiled.

"I had no idea you were going to school here. This is an amazing coincidence," he beamed.

Zero had an eyebrow arched, lost on the story. Callie noticed his confusion and smiled.

"Z, you remember me telling you about Phineas," she said.

Zero's blue eyes widened.

"Oh shit! Yeah! I remember now!" he exclaimed.

Zero knew the story well. He had seen the pictures taped to Callie's bulletin board in her bedroom. He had never had to be separated from a friend like she had, and could not imagine his life without his best friend—Callie.  
Zero grinned, then slung a long arm around Phineas and another around Callie.

"You're with us now, Fin," the taller boy declared.

Phineas looked wary, but Callie just smiled at him. He would quickly learn that lanky, ever smiling boy would become one of his very best friends.

"Let's go eat. Tino's saving us a seat in the cafeteria," he said.

Phineas and Callie were reunited, both finding themselves glued to each other and lead by Zero in every daily shenanigan. Their friendship was strengthened when a year later, Callie's parents were gunned down in a library shooting, and yet another tragedy when Callie and Zero discovered something sinister in the Astor household.  
Phineas never knew his father, but he knew his mother well. He knew she was cold, hellbent on forcing manners on her son, and had a drinking problem. She was the reason Phineas was always so soft-spoken and polite. She was also the reason he came to school in sweaters to cover bruises and cuts, developed a knack for well executed excuses, and why he began coming to school hiding the marks of his suffering on the undersides of his arms, his torso, and his thighs. He did not dare approach Callie with his problems, as she was suffering through her own problems with her parents' untimely death, and he could not begin to tell Zero. Zero did not know what depression was, and would never understand. He was alone, or so he felt. Nothing, however, went under Callie's nose undetected.  
Zero was not home the day they were meeting him to eat pizza and watch horror movies, as they had been planning all October long. Callie had been living with the Owens' and would soon be handed over to a nearby aunt until she was 18. So, for their last days to easily congregate, Callie and Phineas ran to the Owens' house in the pouring rain, happy that the terrible weather had ruined the trick-or-treaters plans, and they could spend their Halloween night undisturbed.  
When they ran inside the empty house, Mr. Owens sound asleep watching football and Mrs. Owens still at work, Phineas was soaked completely through. Being closer to the trees on the sidewalk, Callie only soaked her t-shirt.

"Time to raid Z's closet," Phineas said as they entered Zero's bedroom, a gallery of band posters, motorcycle ads, and to Callie's annoyance, bikini-clad sluts straddling Harley's.

"My favorite hobby," Callie said, slinging her backpack onto Zero's bed and opening his overflowing closet.

She grabbed one of her boyfriend's Megadeth t-shirts, a pair of cargo shorts and a Batman t-shirt for Phineas. She tossed the garments to her friend.

"Where do you think that crazy fuck is, anyway?" Callie asked.

Phineas shrugged and turned to go change in the bathroom across the hall.

"No telling. He better hurry up, though," she popped off.

Phineas' laugh echoed off of the bathroom walls.

"Promise me something, Cal?" he asked.

Callie hid in a corner and swapped shirts.

"What?" she asked.

"Promise me I won't be third wheeling this one tonight," he teased.

Callie snorted as her head popped through the collar.

"Shut up, Fin," she replied.

Phineas chuckled. Callie walked forward to the door and switched on a lava lamp on Zero's desk, illuminating the area in a pink glow. As she did, her eyes caught Phineas' pale backside as he reached for the borrowed t-shirt. She looked away, only to do a double take as the boy began to pull his arms through. He turned to the side, and that's when Callie saw them. Purple lines criss-crossed his sides, and she could see how they spread across his flat stomach. She knew better than to think they were stretch marks. The boy could not have weighed more than 110 pounds, and had never been overweight. In fact, just the opposite. No, these were new. They had been to the beach countless times, and she had not seen a flaw on her friend's usually bare, porcelain skin. It suddenly dawned on her why he had become so distant. So timid again—a habit she and Zero had thought they had helped break. This was why he was wearing so many sweaters and hoodies, and why he shrunk away Zero would try to provide one of his famous hugs. This was what he was hiding.

"Hey, Callie? Could you bring me one of Z's hoodies?" he asked.

She did not reply, but crossed the hall just as Phineas was turning around. Before he could react, Callie ripped the t-shirt back over his head, exposing not only a marred torso, but a minefield of purple bruises. She stared in horror. Phineas was too shocked to reply. Callie scanned the boy, detecting cuts and bruises from his wrists to his shoulders. Phineas was frozen.  
Suddenly, Callie angrily grabbed his arms and backed him against the wall.

"Who did this to you?" she exclaimed.

Phineas struggled to find words.

"No one," he choked out.

"No one? Someone beat the shit out of you! Tell me!" she demanded.

"It's nothing," he argued.

She snatched one of his arms and held it up, displaying the scars.

"Someone is beating you and instead of dealing with it, you're cutting yourself, Fin!" she shouted, "It's not fucking nothing!"

Phineas was silent for a moment, then broke down to tears and ripped his arm out of her grasp.

"Fin," Callie said.

Phineas sobbed and kept his head hung. Callie sighed and grasped his cheeks, forcing him to look at her. She bit her bottom lip and stroked his cheeks.

"Who did this to you, sweetheart?" she asked, taking her tone down.

Phineas' bottom lip shook.

"My mom," he whispered.

Callie's heart fell.

"And lately it's gotten really bad, Cal," he admitted.

Callie let out a shaky breath.

"Why didn't you tell me, Fin? My God!"

Phineas sniffed.

"I couldn't. With the tragedy of what happened with you parents, I just couldn't bring it up," he replied.

Callie snorted.

"And what about Z?"

Phineas scoffed.

"He would never understand," he replied.

Callie was silent for a moment, letting his words sink in. Phineas looked away and wiped his eyes. Callie reached for the boy and brought him into a hug. Phineas buried his face in her shoulder.

"Just don't tell Z about the cutting," he mumbled.

Callie gently rocked him and stroked the back of his head.

"I won't," she promised, "But your mom is going to pay for this."

Phineas backed up.

"Callie—"

"Maybe not now, but I swear to God, Fin, if I see her lay another hand on you, I'll drop her. You understand me?"

Phineas nodded. Down the hall, they could hear the garage door open.

"Z's home," Phineas said distantly.

Callie turned away, grabbed a washcloth and soaked it in cold water, then made Phineas wash his face and bring down the swelling around his eyes so Zero would not know. She then put the Batman t-shirt over his head.

"And I'm going to help you with this," she said gesturing to the marks of self-harm decorating his body.

He smiled and nodded. She cupped his cheek.

"No more," she said.

Phineas closed his eyes as Callie kissed his forehead. She helped him clean up, then they following the sound of Zero's voice as he called them from the garage.  
Satisfied that Phineas looked a little disheveled, Callie turned the bathroom light off and began to leave when Phineas caught her arm.

"Cal," he said.

Callie stopped just as she was stepping out into the hall. She looked up at him, and he smiled meekly.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

She smiled and pulled him into a hug.

"Love you, sweetheart," she said.

Phineas smiled to himself and gave her a light squeeze, then kissed the side of her head.

"Love you, too."

Down the hall, they could hear Zero's playful voice begin to count down. Phineas and Callie laughed, and Callie took her best friend's hand and led him the garage. Inside, Zero grabbed the two of them and led them by his old SUV to a trailer. On it was an odd shape covered with a blue tarp.

"What the shit?" Callie asked.

Zero excitedly hopped over to her, kissed her, then grinned.

"You won't believe it," he said.

Callie raised an eyebrow.

"Won't believe what?" she asked.

He giggled and bounded up on the trailer. Callie and Phineas watched curiously as Zero excitedly unhooked various bungee cords, and like the most dramatic of magicians, yanked the tarp away to reveal an old, dusty, Harley Davidson Street Glide. He smiled proudly, and laughed when he saw his girlfriend's jaw hit the concrete.

"It's happening, baby," he said.


End file.
